Someone told me once: "Sara, I hope you don't get married just cause you're getting older and wanna start a family. I know you really want to get married. And when women get to your age they start to panic and just marry the first guy that comes along. I've seen my cousin do this and I wonder why she's with this dude who is so not for her. Make sure you get married for the right reason...love."
Hmmm...interesting advice: Don't get married just cause you're getting older and want to start a family. To me that's the same as saying: Don't get a job just cause you want to get paid. I mean, sometimes I think people get so caught up in the intangible they forget to be practical. Let me explain.
Your job has a fundamental purpose. You render your services in exchange for tangible monetary compensation. You use this tangible compensation to provide you and your family with the basics; food, shelter and clothing. And if the compensation is really good then you can throw in a recreational yatch complete with spinning rims. But there's more to it than just the monthly salary. You actually get satisfaction from doing your job. And you want to do it better and so you study more. Then you decide to pursue a career with a special leaning toward a unique talent and passion that you discovered you had while doing your job. And because you are so good at it you eventually get more tangible compensation than you even dreamed. But your true success is felt within. That intangible indescribable warm fuzzy feeling of pride and satisfaction when you finish a project or win a big case or press Copy and Paste.
So of course you should find a job you are passionate about. But don't forget the purpose of working in the first place! I mean if I waited until I found a job I was passionate about I'd be home...my parent's home...on my bum and broke! And not only broke, but I wouldn't have the experience necessary to get my dream job!!! In fact I wouldn't even know what my dream job looked like because in reality when you get your first job for most of us it's the beginning of a career. And every post opens our eyes to new things. It's a process to the top!
In a similar manner of course you should marry someone you love! But don't forget the purpose of marriage in the first place! I'm an engineer so I tend to look at things pretty logically and I think some people get too sentimental about this whole choosing a mate thing. So much so...that they never choose one!!! I mean we all understand that we should marry for love. We've watched enough romantic comedies to understand this. And since romantic comedies are a solid foundation to base major life decisions I am in no way advocating that we should just marry the first guy that comes along when we here that biological clock ticking like the alligator from Peter Pan!
But let's get practical about two things. Firstly there is the tangible or practical reason for getting married. Now for everyone one this tangible or practical benefit might be different but it exists. It may be partnership; someone to help around the house like I pick up after Hayden and he reahes the high things on the shelf. I think that's a fair trade! Or it may be companionship, sex, children, intimacy or all of the above. There are benefits to be had by hooking up with that special someone. My personal favorite is the s-benefit.
And secondly, what is love? Why do people think love is this event that's going to happen to them? Pow!!! Pop!!! Well what if Pow and Pop don't come till you're 106. You just threw all the practical benefits of marriage out the window. It's like having intangible job satisfaction without any monthly salary, no perks, no company car, no foreign training, no cocaine parties (Google Bernie Madoff), no retirement income. Just pure sweat. It's never happened before but somehow I've gotta sneaky suspicion that my job satisfaction would go way down if I didn't see that check come in on the 30th.
So what IS love? 1Cor13:4-8 Love is patient and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...
Sounds a lot to me like love is a whole lot of things that you do. It's more of an action than a thing. More of a process than an event. It's not so much a temporary state like happy, sad, mad, glad nor is it triggered by high hormone levels like lust. It's a summation of actions that you transmit to others through acts of kindness, sacrifice, selflessness and some serious touching. Hey! We talkin' marriage here!
You know I told my fiance a few weeks after we decided to get married: Hon, maybe we're rushing into things. We've been friends over 7 years now. But we only started dating under a year ago. His response: Rushing? I'm 34 years old and I wanna have some kids. You not so young yourself, hon. What age do you plan on having your first child? Now to us that's important. Cause we wanna have a couple of kid-free years first too. Oh the s-benefit is his favorite benefit too! Every couple is different. And every couple's priorities are different. I want four kids and i want to have the first before I'm 35 because it's adviseable medically. So timing is important for me.
My point is I think the person that was worried about women in their thirties and forties rushing to get married for practical reasons has a point...but a very small one. In that rushing to do something can limit the time you have to review all the data before hand to make your judgement. Like if BMW had a one day sale and you only had an hour to choose a car and you forgot to specify the colour so you ended up with the blue 3 series instead of the red one and you always regretted it....wait a min...regret?...you got a BMW...ON SALE!!! Who cares what colour it is!!! Man with the money you saved you can paint it red later if you wish! Unless you got a BMW motorcycle! And you didn't even know how to ride one. And then you had to spend money and time to take lessons to learn how to drive it. Then when you finally could use it it always messed up your hair. And you'd reached to work with helmet head. Now that's a bad decision! I mean it all depends on if you ended up compromising on colour or class. You know what I mean?
Anyways I'm not an expert. So I can't tell you how to find a guy or gal to marry. How to fall "in love" with the "right" guy or gal and all that jazzes. But what I do know is that marriage is really a practical partnership. And that I put more trust in love the action than love the emotion anyday. Falling in love sounds great if you live in a romantic comedy. But all that pow and pop with no common vision, commitment, sacrifice and love in action...who knows what happens after 90mins and the credits roll.
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